Electromagnetic scattering by a conducting strip with a multilayer elliptic dielectric coating

The scattering of an electromagnetic plane wave by a conducting strip coated with a multilayer elliptic dielectric is considered. The solution of this problem is carried out by using an expansion of the electromagnetic field in terms of Mathieus functions and by implementing an efficient procedure for the "treatment" of the boundary conditions. This procedure could be a useful tool for checking the accuracy of numerical techniques widely used in electromagnetic compatibility, as it allows the solution of one of the few canonically solvable scattering problems involving perfectly conducting objects with sharp edges and inhomogeneous dielectrics. Many numerical results concerning the scattering cross section per unit length are provided and, where possible, they are compared with already available results. We consider only perpendicular incidence, although oblique generalization is conceptually easy.